Introducing the new Office 365 Partner admin center

The new Office 365 Partner admin center provides Partners new and enhanced tools to manage their Office 365 customers. The new Office 365 Partner admin center is rolling out to partners worldwide over the next few weeks. Previously, with Partner tools in the Office 365 admin center, you could perform delegated administration tasks on behalf of customers and create trial invitations, purchase offers, and offers for delegated administration. With the tools in the new Partner admin center, you are now also able to:

View the customers for which you have delegated admin privileges—all in one place.

View all your customers in one place

To see a list of all the customers for which you have delegated admin privileges, log in to your Office 365 admin portal, and select Partner from the top header. In the Office 365 Partner admin center, select client management from the left navigation area. The customer list that appears is the starting point for viewing important information about customers and performing admin tasks on behalf of customers. To view summary information about a particular customer, including their contact information and subscription details, or to get to quick links to perform admin tasks on behalf of a customer, just select their name from the list.

In the Office 365 Partner admin center, you can view your customer list and select a customer to view summary information, including customer contact information and subscription details.

You can also search for a customer by name using the search box above your customer list. When you start typing a customer name, a drop-down list of the closest matches appears under the search box, making it fast and easy to find the customer you’re looking for. This is especially useful when you’re managing many customers.

The list makes it easy to review the service health of all your customers, too. A glance at the Service health column lets you know quickly if any customers have been impacted by a service incident. To get details about the service incident affecting that customer, click the information icon that appears next to their name.

Perform admin tasks on behalf of a customer

In the client management section of the Partner admin center, you can also select a customer to start performing admin tasks on behalf of that customer. You can go directly to the customer’s Office 365 admin center, Exchange Online admin center, SharePoint Online admin center, or Lync Online admin center by using Quick Links. As a Partner with delegated admin permissions, you can perform administrative tasks for these services just as if you were an admin within the customer’s organization.

Performing admin tasks on a customer’s behalf is simple: select the customer and then a Quick Link.

View your customers’ service health

You can also view a customer’s service health dashboard after you’ve selected that customer from your client management list—just by clicking service health in the left navigation. This gives you better visibility into events or issues that may be impacting a customer’s environment, including existing incidents and upcoming planned maintenance events. You can also use the search box to find a particular customer’s service health dashboard fast.

View a customer’s service health dashboard to see if there are any incidents that may be impacting that customer.

Create, edit, and view your customers’ service requests

You can also easily manage service requests on behalf of your customers. Once you’ve selected a customer from your list, click service requests in the left navigation. This displays a list of all Office 365 service requests associated with that customer that have been opened with Microsoft support, including the current status of the request, date opened, and date last modified. To view the details of a particular service request, add notes to it, or even close it if the issue has been resolved, just select that service request.

To find a specific service request fast, type the reference number in the search box at the top of the service requests page, or search for an individual customer to view all the service requests associated with that customer. This can save you a lot of time, whether you’re managing just a few customers or many.

You can view or edit existing service requests on behalf of a customer in the Service requests section.

In addition to viewing and modifying service requests on behalf of a customer, Partners can create a new service request on behalf of a customer. It’s as simple as clicking the plus sign (+) at the top of the service requests page. Creating a new service request enters the issue into the Microsoft support system. After creating a new service request, you can go back at any time and view the status of the request, edit the details, or close the request if it has been resolved by the customer or the Partner.

You can also create a new service request on behalf of a customer in the Office 365 Partners admin center.

In the Build your businesssection of the Office 365 Partner center, you can perform the same tasks that were previously available to Partners, including creating trial invitations, purchase offers, and delegated admin requests. When creating purchase offers and trial invitations, you can also select an option to offer delegated administration to your customer at the same time. When you send trial invitations or purchase offers to customers, you are automatically associated as the Partner-of-record for these subscriptions, which may make you eligible to earn an Advisor incentive on the paid subscription.

In the Build your business section, you can create trial invitations, purchase offers, or delegated admin offers to send to your customers.

What’s next?

We’re excited to launch these new tools for Partners and encourage you to explore and start using the new Partner admin center to see how it can help you manage your customers more efficiently. Please note that the Partner admin center is available only to Office 365 Partners who are part of the Microsoft Cloud Partner program. We look forward to delivering new capabilities in the coming months that will further help Partners manage their customers. Stay tuned!